Saw the Dial Toner today, which is an output-only converter from hex-dials to a color LED, and finally keystrokes for your PC, writing the color right into your webpage template or whatever.

Now, that gave me an idea, but there are several differences to what I want to achieve:

• a Raspberry Pi (even in the RP2040-variant Guy is using) is way overkill in my arrogant opinion.
• twiddling six 16-point switches is just a more shitty way of writing it with your keyboard.
• the keyboard interface is not really needed if you can clearly see which numbers to enter.
• (and this is the killer) you should be able to point it at some color around you and use that as the input for the color picker, that way it would be a real color picker.

No idea really, but with eight analog inputs (even if I have to use two per color to get a somewhat usable resolution) and smallish microcontroller (“how hard can it be?” - famous last words) I think an Arduino Nano should be enough. It’s not that the measurement or the display is in any way time-critical, and you don’t need an ARM Cortex for every little project.

Just writing this down at this time to have something to remember once I get started.